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My apartment looks like I threw three elves in a blender and left the lid off.

Man, I love the holidays.

I’ve gone in depth about my Severe Holiday Disorder (SHDD) in the past when I opened up about my deep affection for using Excel spreadsheets to detail my Christmas gift giving (Christmas in Excel). That’s just the tip of the iceburg. I actually start that spreadsheet in August because I can’t possibly contain all the Christmas-related energy I start to muster once I feel the chill of Autumn. And I put all my energy into that spreadsheet from August until the day after Thanksgiving, when I’m officially allowed to barf holiday cheer from one decked hall to the other.

Dave has a rule that I can’t put my Christmas cheer on display in our dwelling place until after Thanksgiving has been officially sent off.

It’s a fair deal I suppose, but I know it just stems from his bah-humbugginess. It isn’t that he’s a Grinch so much as he’s just notably devoid of holiday cheer. You know that moment when you’re walking downtown and everything is lit up and everyone is wearing Christmas colors and it starts to snow and people are smiling at you instead of cursing at you and you feel like there could just be peace on earth if mankind would continue to sedate themselves with cookies and shopping for all eternity? He doesn’t get that feeling. He just, you know, exists. I usually have to pull him kicking and screaming down to storage to get out all the holiday-related things I’ve collected or stolen from my mother’s house. I always mark the weekend after Thanksgiving very clearly on our calendar so that he can see the entire day is reserved for PreChristmasing.

But not this year. This year, things were different.

You see, this year Dave is a mailman. And before Thanksgiving I received a cheery phone call from this modern-day Santa, who told me that he was delivering packages and saw all the lights on people’s houses and was feeling funny on his insides. I explained that was his heart growing three sizes bigger and he exclaimed that he wanted to string lights throughout all the house.

THROUGHOUT ALL THE HOUSE!

It was a Christmas miracle. And now the apartment has holiday cheer in every single corner. Except the toilet. I’ll admit I saw the appropriate toilet-covering decorations at the store and that I may have stopped briefly to examine their properties, but so help me sweet Baby Jesus I will not decorate my toilet. I have boundaries.

Even the babies. DECORATE THE BABIES.

Every other corner, however, is filled to the brim. I have totes full of things I use on a regular basis that had to be put into storage to make room for things that have no practical function whatsoever but to be glorious tidbits of holiday cheer. Dave was so excited he even went online to find a Christmas project and made a fantastical DIY Christmas tree in addition to our regular one.

We now have three trees. Three. Like a holy Christmas Trinity.

There is, of course, a bit of a downside. Dave started feeling all jolly back in mid-November, but since then the ten hour days of hauling parcels from one house to another in the icicle-booger-inducing-cold in the name of Christmas cheer has kind of gotten to him. I fear he’s had a somewhat premature Christmasgasm and now every time he comes home all he sees is work.

It’s hard to be Santa.

I’m trying to come up with solutions that help me with my Christmas fix while also allowing him a reprieve. My top two ideas are to cover everything in white sheets when he gets home or to take a note from his favorite holiday and do some sort of Christmas-Halloween blend.

Of course, Tim Burton already did that. I guess option two could just be to play Nightmare Before Christmas on repeat every night.

I do feel bad for the guy. Besides the fact that his job is naturally difficult year-round and that he’s part of a company that’s going publicly bankrupt, every holiday season when most other folks are complaining about going to too many awkward office holiday parties, he’s hauling enough sacks of mail and truckloads of parcels from Santa’s sleigh to make him want to assassinate the jolly bastard.

Before I do any of those things, though, I’m just going to go with my gut and spew my holiday cheer on him every day from sunrise to sunset in hopes that I can reach that part deep, deep inside of him where he once saw a few Christmas lights and felt warm and fuzzy. I figure it will drive him very severely in one direction or the other, and quite frankly if he’s going to assassinate Santa it’s better we know now so that we can set up a counter strike.

I hope all that holiday cheer spewing doesn’t mean I’ll run out of steam before the big day. My spreadsheet is only half complete. There’s so much more to do – I can’t possibly have a premature Christmasgasm too. I CAN’T.

I can do this. I can. I just downloaded the Andy Williams Christmas album this week. That’ll keep me going for at least another seven days, right? Right!? Wish me luck. I’m going in.

I’m sorry to hear about your husbands extreme Christmas resistance. I’m impressed by your trinity of Christmas trees. My wife and I purchased one and after dragging the thing like a petrified pine corpse into our home, it proceeded to lace every ounce of it with a heavy sheen of Christmas bugs. There were plenty of creatures stirring the night before Christmas. I just hope that none of them carry malaria.

I should note that my trinity of trees are all fake. Very fake. And also – EEEEWWWWWWWWWW Christmas Bugs. I would have scurried right out of the house, locked Dave in, and told him to deal with it while I stayed in a hotel. Blech!